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Question
My mother has been drinking heavily for about 10 years now, after 10 years of sobriety after treatment. When I visit home now I find the drinking being earlier and earlier in the day, the yelling and screaming and paranoia and depression keep me away as they draw me in. Anyway she just got her first DUI, which has her thinking of counseling and treatment, just to look good for the court date. To top it off the compiling worries about her health(very questionable) and other fears lead me to confront a man I dated for a year and a half and have been seeing for the last three months after a breakup about his drinking issues. He seems to be increasingly illogical in discussion and arguments and drinks at least a couple daily, but usually between six and twelve. He says that there is no problem, he always gets up at 4:30 to take care of the farm and never starts till night chore time. He says he just drinks because life is boring and extremely stressful. In the past he's shown a predisposition for a somewhat extreme temper and violence towards the livestock that he explains to me as entirely justified, though he has been becoming more open minded to animal behavior and how to deal with it in other ways. Since I have confronted him about alcohol he has been distant, willing to chat on the phone, but not wanting to see me, because of the conflict, i think. And that of course snowballed into another confrontation. I tried my best to be sane and logical when I talked to him about his drinking, but he skillfully made me quite emotional and not so nice about it. Am I wrong about him having a problem? What is the best thing to do now? Call and make nice and be supportive of him when he's sober or just cut him out of my life? I am so uncomfortable with ditching someone and giving up on them because they have a disease... a disease that makes them deny that its there! Help!
Greetings to you, Katie.
You have written, “I am so uncomfortable with ditching someone and giving up on them because they have a disease... a disease that makes them deny that it’s there! Help!”
First your mother, and now this man ... and your emotional turmoil is becoming unbearable.
We live in a world that is full of people gone spiritually mad -- over the past quarter-century, I have found increasingly few troubled drinkers (such as I and others used to be) who are able to be honest with/about themselves and willing to accept real help.
“Ditching someone” and simply walking away for the sake of one’s own sanity and security or even safety are not the same thing, and that is what I would suggest to you: Walk away from that man.
With your mother, be as kind as you can ... but overall, and if you pray, begin asking our Heavenly Father to lead you to, or to lead to you, one or more of his remnant children with whom you can share in His right fellowship and worship.
Please stay in touch, if you wish,
Joseph Lee O.
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Answers by Expert:
Joseph Lee O.
Expertise
Greetings to you! Amidst the insufficiency of all the philosophical, religious and “self-help” approaches to relief from chronic alcoholism, I have personally experienced the content of “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the book. Thus, I can now explain at least the essence of the physical, mental and emotional aspects of an alcoholic's inherent condition and plight, and I can show why a spiritual solution is required and how it works and how to attain one.
Experience
The oldest of four boys, I grew up in a religious, Midwestern-USA family. Unable to decline a friendly offer in a social setting, I had "no effective mental defense against the first drink" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 43), and took my very first drink ever at age 24 ... and within minutes I had become obsessed with getting more of the effect that glass of homemade wine had given me. Alcohol had just done something *for* me that nothing else had ever done; it had seemingly "fixed" something inside me I had not even known was broken.
Over the next seven years of my life, I "drank up" just about everything and everyone ever meaning much to me at all, and I eventually abandoned my young family so I could drink and smoke pot at will. For, you see, alcohol was giving me a good-to-go feeling about life and a sense of control I had never before had, and at least in the early days of my drinking it could kill just about any pain that came along.
At age 31, however, circumstances and consequences had piled up all around me in ways that were making it obvious I could not continue on much longer. Life had become too tough, my pains had grown too great and the dangers of continuing to drink had become too undeniable for me to be able to continue believing I might ultimately survive an inescapable drop to the bottom of the pit. I still wanted to be able to drink safely as in days past, but something had seemingly "taken over" my drinking and was dragging me completely out-of-control after just one drink. So, and even while completely overwhelmed by the thought of facing life alcohol-free, I decided to stop drinking altogether ... and I quickly discovered I could not. No matter what I said, thought or did even just "one day at a time", I always ended up drinking once again. Where I wanted to drink safely, I could not, and neither could I remain abstinent for very long at all ... and such is the physical "allergy" (where one drink takes another) coupled with alcoholism’s mental-emotional obsession for the effect of alcohol ...
... but then I met a small group of people who personally understood my deadly dilemma - my complete personal powerlessness - and those same folks were quite able to propose a permanent solution. I accepted, of course, and today it is as if I "could not drink even if [I] would" ("Alcoholics Anonymous", the book, page 57), and for that I now remain unendingly grateful.
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